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Thu, 10 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23701&category=rsenr-alThe University of Vermont Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources welcomes Andrew Rubenstein, benefactor to the Rubenstein School, and Thomas Berry, advisor to Vermont U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, as two of the newest members of the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors.

“We are pleased to welcome both Andy Rubenstein and Tom Berry to the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors,” says Dean Nancy Mathews. “Andy and his family have helped transform the School into a leading school of the environment through their vision and support. I am delighted to have him join the board. Tom contributes a local, state, and national viewpoint garnered from his many years of service to Vermont’s U.S. Senators and to the State of Vermont. He will bring a valuable perspective and dimension to ensure that we are aware of the emerging environmental priorities and policy discussions in Washington, D.C. This federal connection is never more important than now.”

Andrew Rubenstein, of Rubenstein Properties LLC in Little Falls, New Jersey, is a longtime friend and benefactor of the School and son of the late Steven Rubenstein and current board member Beverly Rubenstein. In 2003, the Rubenstein family gave the largest single gift in UVM history at the time – a $15 million commitment to support environmental education and research. With this gift, the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources became the first named school or college at UVM. The family had previously contributed $1 million toward the construction of the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory on Burlington’s Lake Champlain waterfront.

In 1991, Andy joined Rubenstein Properties as part of the management team. The family business, started by Steven in 1961, renovates older properties and makes significant improvements that add value and reduce the buildings’ environmental footprints by using environmentally sensitive design and construction. With Steven’s passing in 2008, Andy and his uncle have continued to grow and manage the business. As a member of the New York Metropolitan Region board of directors for the American Technion Society, which supports the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Andy has helped to create endowed fellowships for the Technion in the areas of renewable energy and cancer research.

Thomas Berry, policy advisor and field representative for Vermont U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, joins the Rubenstein School Board as an ex-officio member. Tom advises Senator Leahy on agriculture, conservation, energy, and natural resource issues in the Senator’s Burlington, Vermont office. Tom previously served for ten years in a similar role on staff for the late Vermont U.S. Senator James Jeffords. Tom worked at the Rubenstein School, as an associate faculty member, from 2007 to 2009 while on staff with The Nature Conservancy in Vermont.

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Mon, 24 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23563&category=rsenr-alLifelong Vermonter Dawn Harrington Francis (RM ’80, NRP ’83), currently town manager of Colchester, has played a role in many planning initiatives and community development projects in several northwestern Vermont towns. She grew up in Burlington’s New North End and in Hinesburg, where she attended high school and still lives with her family today. She chose to attend college at the University of Vermont in the School of Natural Resources, now the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

“I wanted a major that built on my interests in the outdoors and sporting activities,” says Dawn, who majored in recreation management (now parks, recreation and tourism). As an undergraduate, she interned with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and worked with the recreation planner who was developing the State’s recreation plan. This experience, in addition to her major’s coursework that had practical application to real community issues, led to her passion for town planning.

At that time in the early 1980s, she also witnessed growing controversy over land use in Chittenden County and surrounding areas. “The Burlington Beltline, now the Northern Connector; the Pyramid Mall, now Maple Tree Place in Williston; and the county’s Circ Highway were being debated and Vermont’s Act 250 was in its infancy,” explains Dawn.

Eager to help balance the different interests involved, she went on to earn a Master’s degree in natural resource planning. For her thesis research, she examined impacts of the ski industry on Vermont communities. Dawn credits former faculty members William Hendrix, Robert Manning, Malcolm Bevins, the late Carl Reidel, and Fred Schmidt as mentors who inspired her to follow her career path, critically analyze data and information, and consider the impacts of decisions on all aspects of a community.

After finishing her Master’s, she worked as a planner for the Franklin-Grand Isle Regional Planning Commission for two years. Then recruited by the Essex town manager, Dawn joined the office as a planner, then as a community development director focusing on planning, zoning, and economic development, and finally as assistant town manager. Her productive 19 years with the town of Essex included helping to obtain grants to restore and convert the abandoned Officer’s Row Houses in Fort Ethan Allen to affordable housing, constructing a bike path between village and town, transforming the State Tree Nursery into an athletic field complex, navigating the environmental impact statement process and mitigating community impacts for a portion of the Circ Highway, and master planning of the Essex Town Center area.

In 2004, Dawn moved on to the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce as the government affairs director. She served as the business community’s advocate at the Vermont State House for issues relating to land use, permitting, economic development, and tax and fiscal policy.

“It’s easy to make a difference in Vermont because legislators and policy makers are so accessible and want to hear from all of their stakeholders,” says Dawn who helped to make progress on housing issues, refinements to Act 250, and smart growth legislation and economic incentives.

After working at the local, regional, and state levels, she realized it was at the local level that she could have the most impact and see the most tangible results. In 2013, Dawn became the town manager for Colchester which includes 27 miles of Lake Champlain shoreline and 365 acres of parks, including the Colchester Causeway bike path. She is helping the town make progress on cleaning up the lake, revitalizing the commercial center in Malletts Bay, and improving buildings and infrastructure.

“I enjoy the challenge of solving problems, building consensus around contentious issues, aligning people and resources to achieve goals, and helping Colchester define a vision for its future,” says Dawn. “It is satisfying to have worked with a lot of different talented people having totally opposite points of view, but seeking common ground, compromising, and getting some really important things done.”

She would love to see more UVM students connect with communities in the region to assist with pressing issues related to recreation, natural resources, and land use management. She hopes to involve Rubenstein School students in Colchester town projects through a potential internship or other service-learning opportunities and has connected with the School’s Office of Experiential Learning.

Dawn’s passion for helping communities goes beyond her job as Colchester town manager. She is on the board for the Champlain Housing Trust which provides affordable housing and other important social services and for the Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations which assists with victims and crimes involving sexual and domestic abuse.

She enjoys the close knit community of her hometown of Hinesburg where she lives with her husband Kevin. Their daughter Kaitlin (RM ’09), who briefly followed in her mother’s footsteps, is now pursuing a doctorate in physical therapy at Franklin-Pierce University. Their son Matt (UVM ’11), an economics major, is working for a tech startup business in Denver and playing mandolin for a local band.

Avid hikers, bikers, campers, and sports enthusiasts, Dawn and Kevin are reading Professor Emeritus Bob Manning’s books on the national parks and hoping to explore them all when they retire.

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Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23536&category=rsenr-alThree long-time members of the University of Vermont Rubenstein School Board of Advisors step down in 2016. The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources would like to thank F. Peter Rose, Ross Whaley, and Sarah Bergman for their many years of advising and philanthropic support to the School.

F. Peter Rose (UVM ’54) of Tucson, Arizona joined the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors in 1996 and has been an exceptional contributor to the School and its students. A retired art and antiquities appraiser, Peter earned a Master’s degree in environmental studies from Bard College and began devoting his life to environmental affairs, especially to the conservation of sea turtles. An article in the New York Times on the then-named School of Natural Resources brought Peter back to the UVM campus where he began his long association with the School through then Dean Donald DeHayes and former Dean Lawrence Forcier. Peter provided a sizeable gift towards construction of the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory on the Lake Champlain waterfront. He founded the DeHayes Multicultural Scholarship Fund in 2006 in honor of Don DeHayes and to continue Don’s legacy of enhancing diversity in the School by attracting multicultural students. He also endowed the Chrysalis Graduate Fund in the School to support students pursuing graduate degrees particularly at the doctoral level. In 2014, Peter gave the initial seed money to explore the feasibility of the Economics of the Anthropocene Project Graduate Research and Training Partnership based at McGill University, York University, and UVM, and continued to support the project.

Ross Whaley of Tupper Lake, New York, is a professor emeritus and former president of the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He earned his PhD in natural resources economics and his Bachelor’s degree in forestry from the University of Michigan and his Master’s degree in forest economics from Colorado State University. Ross is the former chair of the Adirondack Park Agency and past president of the Society of American Foresters. He served on the board of directors for The Nature Conservancy and the Pinchot Institute and chaired the New York State Governor’s Task Force on Forest Industry. As a founding member of the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors, for twenty years, Ross contributed thoughtful advice and wise insight to the School from his experiences as university teacher, researcher, administrator, consultant, and as one of the most respected environmental scientists of his time.

Sarah Bergman of Boston, Massachusetts grew up in southern Vermont. She joined the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors in early 2011. She is the assistant director of the Center for Biological Diversity, a national endangered species and habitat protection group. With a Bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Amherst College, Sarah served as paralegal and office manager for the nonprofit National Environmental Law Foundation and worked on Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and National Environmental Policy Act cases. Sarah contributed her experience in the nonprofit world and shared her expertise in environmental education and protection and in social justice as a member of the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors.

“We would like to thank Sarah Bergman, Peter Rose, and Ross Whaley for their more than forty-five collective years of service and valuable contributions to the Rubenstein School as highly respected members of our Board of Advisors,” says Dean Nancy Mathews. “Their support, advice, and engagement have greatly contributed to the ongoing success of our School, and we shall miss them as members of our Board.”

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Tue, 04 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23480&category=rsenr-alNeahga Leonard (MS-NR ’11) manages a project to protect the Golden-headed langur, a critically endangered monkey endemic to Cat Ba Island off the coast of northern Vietnam. His fight to save the species, also called the Cat Ba langur, extends to conserving its habitat and much of the biodiversity of the island and to conservation on a national scale.

In 2000, resulting primarily from poaching, only 53 of the close to 2800 Cat Ba langurs estimated in the 1960s remained on the island. The IUCN, the World Conservation Union, listed the langur as one of the world’s most endangered primate species. In 2014, Neahga arrived on the island as the manager of the Cat Ba Langur Conservation Project (CBLCP), founded in 2000 to halt impending extinction of the langur.

Neahga’s passion for environmental conservation grew out of a childhood spent close to the natural world in coastal northern California. His family frequently moved around the state and traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada during his youth.

“My exposure to a wide range of environments and ecosystems helped instill in me a good eye for patterns and relationships, seeing how things fit together, often in a similar way from one environment to another,” says Neahga.

Neahga turned his keen eye and passion for the environment into a Master’s degree from the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources in the University of Vermont’s Field Naturalist and Ecological Planning program. The unique curriculum matches students with real world partners and conservation projects. Neahga partnered with Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to develop a protocol to monitor rare plant species and changes in their distributions attributed to climate change.

“The program placed a great deal of emphasis on understanding the relationship and connections between the exploration of science and knowledge and the ‘real world’ concerns of environmentalist, farmer, politician, business owner, and the average citizen,” he says.

After graduation, Neahga worked for a short time in Vermont as a coordinator for the Staying Connected Initiative, maintaining wildlife corridors from upstate New York to eastern Maine and into Canada.

“This was particularly interesting work because it moved away from the traditional ‘buy, isolate, and protect’ version of conservation,” says Neahga. “The goal was to maintain both the wildlife connectivity and the working landscapes cultural aspect of Vermont.”

From Vermont to Vietnam, Neahga transferred his lessons in wildlife and habitat conservation to help in the fight to save the rarest primate in Vietnam and the third rarest in the world. A leaf-eating, tree- and cave-dwelling monkey, the Cat Ba langur, lives on the steep limestone karsts and in the dense interior jungle of the island in several isolated sub-populations.

Since its inception, the CBLCP has focused on species and habitat protection, population monitoring, law enforcement, environmental education, and research. Partnerships with Cat Ba National Park, established on the island in 1986, and local people in villages surrounding the park provide the foundation for direct community participation in the conservation effort.

Neahga battles overhunting of the langur for traditional medicine and sport, poaching, habitat loss and fragmentation, development, and poorly regulated tourism. He spends much of his time building long-term working relationships with local stakeholders, politicians, and government agencies.

“People are the most important part of conservation,” states Neahga. “Much of the job of conservation is to get people to change their behaviors and to convince government officials of the importance of conserving biodiversity.”

In Vietnam, rampant poaching of almost all plants and animal species has resulted in rapid biodiversity loss. Neahga supervises a team of four project staff who run regular monitoring patrols in Special Protected Areas of the island, assist Cat Ba National Park rangers, and coordinate with local citizens and landowners who help to keep people out of sensitive langur areas.

Outside of the Special Protected Areas, Neahga and his staff run three anti-poaching teams that go into the forest up to 22 times each month to collect and destroy illegal traps. These teams are made up of local villagers, unassociated with the park, many of whom are reformed hunters who also provide a vehicle for adult education in the villages.

“Our goal is to restore the Cat Ba langur population to a long-term viable number and to maintain the rich biodiversity of Cat Ba Island into the future,” says Neahga. “For me, this project is important more for how the conservation actions provide a window into the larger conservation issues of the region and offer a bit of leverage to address those issues.”

With support of the Vietnamese government, the Cat Ba langur’s special status allows Neahga and his team to work on a wide range of conservation concerns and protect not just the one species but many others, most of which would not otherwise receive attention. At the national level, the CBLCP has served as a model for development of other nation-wide environmental policies.

Neahga coordinates environmental education programs in seven schools on the island. These programs encourage an environmental awareness and ecological literacy among young students that is otherwise lacking in the region. He hopes that his efforts to educate and bring awareness to the plight of the Cat Ba langur as one of the most imperiled species in the world will help to curb biodiversity loss of other species on the island and throughout Vietnam.

“Biodiversity is sort of money in the bank when it comes to dealing with some of the major environmental changes coming down the line, climate change being a big one,” says Neahga. “Not all species will be able to adapt to the changes in the environment, so we need to have as broad and deep a pool of species as possible to maximize the ability of ecosystems to adapt to changing environmental conditions.”

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Thu, 28 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23187&category=rsenr-alGary Simpson (UVM ’76), co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Windmill Capital, an investment management firm in New York City, has been appointed as a new member of the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors.

“Gary Simpson brings valuable leadership, board experience, and management expertise to the Rubenstein School’s Board of Advisors,” states Dean Nancy Mathews. “His business acumen and his passion for the University, in particular his support to the Environmental Program, will help to steer the School into the top tier of schools of the environment in the nation.”

A native of New York City, Gary grew up skiing at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort, and it was a natural transition for him to attend the University Vermont. As a botany major, he was greatly influenced by Ian Worley, former Professor of Botany in UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“Ian broadened my horizon’s as a student and opened my eyes educationally,” states Gary. To provide similar experiences to young students and to honor Ian, who directed the UVM Environmental Program from 1994-2008, Gary created and now supports the Ian A. Worley Awards for Creative and Independent Thinking in Environmental Studies. The awards are given to students and faculty to encourage and support creativity and independent thinking in the pursuit of addressing environmental goals.

Immediately after graduating from UVM, Gary worked in his family’s construction business in New York City and then went on to develop several of his own businesses. He earned his MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business in 1989.

Now, with more than 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in a variety of companies and business sectors, Gary has worked in construction, real estate, and venture capital. He has managed more than $1 billion in construction work including restoration of New York City’s Ellis Island and construction of the Brooklyn Navy Yard cogeneration plant, which provides electric power and steam heat to Consolidated Edison of New York.

He is also founder and director of Transit Wireless LLC, which owns the exclusive license to operate cellular and WiFi services in New York City’s underground subway stations of which more than three quarters are presently active. His company plans to finish connecting all of the stations by the end of this year and to extend service into the tunnels in the future.

Gary has served on the board of directors of many organizations, including the Council on the Environment of New York City, the Center Against Domestic Violence, and the Metro New York Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization, a global network of young chief executives with a shared mission to become “better leaders through lifelong learning and idea exchange.”

A member of the New York Angels investment organization, Gary looks to fund and mentor great young entrepreneurs and startup companies.

As a Rubenstein School Board member, Gary states, “I enjoy my participation in the School and helping with the mission of engaging and educating young people in the environmental disciplines and about urgent environmental issues, so they can go on to become good citizens and passionate leaders and incorporate environmental values into their lives in ways big and small.”

Gary and his wife Sandi and son Max continue to enjoy skiing at Sugarbush. Gary serves on the board of his son’s ice hockey association and is involved in concussion prevention and management.

“I try to be involved in programs that I find meaningful and impactful, and give back to help influence someone else’s life for the better,” says Gary.

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Tue, 19 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23130&category=rsenr-alAs a postdoctoral associate at Umeå University in Sweden, Rubenstein School alum David Seekell (NR ’09) received a prestigious Wallenberg Fellowship in 2015 from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, which invests in promising young researchers from all disciplines. Now an assistant professor of ecology at Umeå, he continues to pursue research in limnology and studies the impacts of rapid climate changes on Sweden’s boreal and arctic lakes.

David’s fellowship came with a $2 million research grant, which will support whole-ecosystem experiments to investigate the potential for tipping points, beyond which damage caused by climate change impacts is difficult to repair, in arctic and boreal lakes. Very few lake ecosystem studies of this magnitude exist in the world.

David’s interest in the study of ecosystems began as an undergraduate in the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. As a first-year student, David, a native of Rhode Island, was captivated by NR 1 Natural History and Field Ecology taught by former Associate Professor Larry Forcier.

“Larry was key in the development of my thinking of how ecosystems work,” says David, who went on to earn his PhD in environmental science at the University of Virginia (UVA) in 2014, followed by postdoctoral studies of lake ecosystems at Umeå University. But, the important lessons extended beyond classroom work.

“Larry helped to build my confidence level in interacting with faculty and administration in academia. This comfort level was extremely beneficial later on as a doctoral student and as a postdoctoral associate when networking became critical to obtaining important professional development opportunities," adds David, who, with Larry's urging, applied to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. He spent a summer diving into ecological research at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York.

Under the tutelage of Research Associate Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, former Professor Austin Troy, and former adjunct faculty member Morgan Grove of the Spatial Analysis Laboratory in the School, David gained skills in GIS and produced an undergraduate project that his mentors encouraged him to publish.

“Jarlath’s GIS Practicum course was the best class I took as an undergraduate,” states David. “Jarlath taught me to solve problems by figuring out the questions first. That’s what being an independent researcher is all about – you have to be able to identify the novel and important questions first before going after the solutions.”

While a visiting PhD candidate with a NSF Nordic Research Opportunity graduate fellowship, David took his undergraduate project from the GIS class to Uppsala University in Sweden. There, he expanded the work to examine regional scale variability in biogeochemistry in lakes. He has since visited UVM to speak to students about his career path in lake studies at the bequest of Rubenstein School Associate Professor Jason Stockwell, director of the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Center on the Lake Champlain waterfront.

David's growing connections with Swedish colleagues helped to propagate his appointments at Umeå University where he conducts his large-scale studies on degraded lake ecosystems, resulting from human-related climate change, land-use change, and pollution. When a lake ecosystem goes beyond a certain tipping point, this often manifests as harmful algal blooms or fisheries collapse.

This is what limnologists like David try to prevent. During graduate school, he studied fish populations in Peter and Paul Lakes in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cary Institute, and UVA. The research team developed and tested early warning indicators, such as specific variations in lake chlorophyll levels, that can signal a collapse in fish populations well before it happens.

David notes that lake productivity indicators are different in Sweden than in lakes in the United States, where nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, drive algae and fish populations dynamics. As in the United States, many changes in Sweden’s lakes are related to climate change. But in Sweden, the concern is for the increasingly brown color of the lakes’ water due to rising inputs of partially decomposed organic matter in the form of peat and vegetation running off the surrounding landscape.

“It’s all about water clarity and color and how much light penetrates. The water is brown as though it contains coffee grounds or tea leaves,” David says.

To learn more, he will push the lake ecosystems in Sweden to their tipping points by adding even more organic matter in large-scale experiments and investigate the impacts. He hopes to learn how brown the water can become before algae get too little light to grow and if lakes in the boreal zone respond differently than in the arctic or temperate zones. His results will have impacts for management of lakes throughout the world.

Announced this month, David has won the Science for Solutions Award from the American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest scientific society for earth and space sciences, in recognition of his application of fundamental earth science to help solve global problems.

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Thu, 14 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23129&category=rsenr-alRubenstein School staff member Erin De Vries (MS-NR '08) will step down on July 15 from her position as Watershed and Lake Education Coordinator for the University of Vermont Watershed Alliance, a key partnership between the Lake Champlain Sea Grant (LCSG) and UVM Extension. After six years with the Watershed Alliance, Erin and her family are moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan where her husband will start a new job.

Erin earned her B.A. in environmental science, focused on conservation biology and botany, from Franklin Pierce College (University) and her M.S. in ecological planning from the University of Vermont, where she conducted inventories of wetlands and vernal pools for her graduate project.

Prior to her position with the Watershed Alliance, Erin worked as a wetlands ecologist for the state of Vermont, as a botanist in Oregon, and as an environmental consultant on Saint Kitts and Nevis where she helped to create the St. Mary’s Biosphere Reserve, the first reserve in the English-speaking Caribbean. She also briefly worked as an administrative assistant for the UVM Environmental Program.

For the Watershed Alliance, Erin coordinated local middle and high school educational programs in water resources. She used a place-based approach that mixed classroom instruction with applied action, such as water quality monitoring and community service.

In classrooms of local schools, Erin taught both students and their teachers about watersheds, aquatic ecology, water quality, stormwater, erosion, blue-green algae, and phosphorus, among other topics affecting Lake Champlain and its watersheds. In Vermont’s wetlands and streams, she engaged the students in activities that involved netting and identifying macroinvertebrates, measuring water quality, and assessing stream habitat.

“The goal of the program is to ensure that all students in the Lake Champlain Basin are aware of their local water resources and learn how to be good stewards,” explains Erin, who grew up developing a love for water near the headwaters of the Brandywine River in Pennsylvania.

The program culminates with a stewardship project designed by the students, such as spear-heading a river clean-up or invasive species removal. Others have designed a lake-related exhibit at the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center on the Burlington waterfront.

As an Aquatic Science Literacy Educator for a number of primary and secondary education initiatives in the state, Erin contributed her expertise in water education to help meet the goals of environmental literacy in Vermont. She sat on the board for SWEEP (State-Wide Environmental Education Programs) and partnered with the Champlain Basin Education Initiative (CBEI).

“Erin has played a key role in the development of the Lake Champlain Sea Grant program,” states Professor Breck Bowden, Director of the Lake Champlain Sea Grant. “With critical support from UVM Extension, Erin nurtured and grew the Watershed Alliance and related initiatives that seek to enhance the environmental literacy of youth in the Lake Champlain Basin. Through her efforts dozens of undergraduate interns have received valuable training in environmental education, scores of teachers have learned how to better incorporate environmental science into their curricula, and thousands of young students have been introduced to the complexity and wonder of the Lake Champlain environment. These students will be the next generation of scientists and stewards and Erin’s efforts have sown the seeds for new visions of our future. We will miss Erin’s dedication to the LCSG program and her enthusiasm for Lake Champlain and all that make their home here.”

“Leaving Vermont is bittersweet,” says Erin, “but it is time for me to move on and do something new and different. I will miss Vermont’s landscape and the waterways and wetlands I have grown to know so well. I enjoyed the small tight-knit Sea Grant and Extension community and working with my undergraduate interns.”

The move is a new adventure for Erin, her husband Greg, a cultural landscape architect, and their two children Wade and Twyla. Erin is looking forward to sailing the Great Lakes, camping on rocky shores, and picking the best peaches and cherries west of Pennsylvania. We can bet Erin will spread some of her spunky Vermont progressive ideas and her know-how in water stewardship throughout Ann Arbor and the greater Detroit area.

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Tue, 14 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=23025&category=rsenr-alKeri Davis Hess (MS-NR ’06) started working for Rainforest Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to the conservation of tropical forests and specializing in sustainable wood and fiber certification, the same week she defended her master’s thesis in natural resource planning in the Rubenstein School. Ten years later, as senior manager for markets transformation, she works with North American retailers and brand companies to develop and implement responsible sourcing programs for their wood and fiber needs.

A native of the Midwest and with a bachelor's degree in environmental studies, Keri came to the University of Vermont from Colorado to delve into the emerging fields of ecological design and ecological economics. With mentorship from Rubenstein School Professors Jon Erickson of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and Thomas Hudspeth of the UVM Environmental Program, Keri used an ecological-economic model to identify economic renewal and environmental performance opportunities related to Vermont’s wood products industry.

Through her master’s work, she showed that by applying strategies such as regional purchasing and resource efficiency, Vermont’s wood product industry could become more resilient. The outcome of her research stressed the importance of incorporating social and environmental costs associated with these strategies into the model to understand the potential of any unintended consequences.

“My research recommended that the industry follow best practices with policies supporting responsible forest management and clean production practices,” said Keri.

Her thesis work segued perfectly into her entry position at the Richmond, Vermont offices of Rainforest Alliance which works in more than 100 countries around the world to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land use and business practices and consumer behavior. Keri began working on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification of wood and fiber supply chains of companies throughout the United States and Canada.

She managed the certification of over 60 companies which eventually doubled within a couple of years. “It was a time of growth for the Rainforest Alliance and was very exciting!” she states.

With increased experience and responsibility for more companies, her position grew to the level of senior manager of markets transformation.

Keri explains how markets transformation works. By driving demand for responsibly sourced products down the supply chain from consumer to producer, practices on the ground in forests such as illegal logging, deforestation, forest degradation, and practices that impose on traditional and indigenous rights are no longer acceptable and are replaced by sources demonstrating responsible practices. Rainforest Alliance works with coalitions of companies to align their programs and gain critical mass to help to transform not just one company’s practices, but an entire industry.

“The best part of my job is that ‘a-ha moment’ when a company understands the impact that they can have by changing the way they operate and then actually seeing the results of their efforts,” she says. “This is usually years down the road, after all the hard work of creating and vetting policies, building systems to collect and validate supplier data, and training suppliers and staff. It is no small task to change a large company’s operations to support these policies, but the impact is huge!”

On occasion, she has traveled to locations in North, South, and Central America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. “I accompanied a CEO, whose company was a large user of paper, to visit FSC-certified forest operations in Guatemala and Brazil to experience firsthand what sustainable forest management means in practice, on the ground,” she says.

For the most part, Keri stays local in Richmond and Huntington, where she lives with her husband Pete, their son Will, Pants the cat, and Lily the dog. She enjoys hiking, biking, skiing, sailing, and playing disc golf. She volunteers to help coordinate the environmental education programs at her son’s elementary school and is considering joining her town commission on energy or conservation.

The name “Lawson” may make you think of Lawson’s Finest Liquids, one of Vermont’s most sought-after breweries. But when owner Sean Lawson returned to Vermont after living out west, it was to work in environmental science and forestry, not open up a brewery.

We talked to Lawson, a UVM alumnus, about changing his career path to start a successful craft brewery.

When did you first realize that brewing beer could be more than just a hobby for you?

After I graduated from UVM with a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies, I went to Montana to do fieldwork with peregrine falcons for a summer then set my sights on being a ski bum for the winter.

I got a job at the Breckenridge Pub and Brewery and eventually started helping occasionally in the brewery. At that point, I was already an avid homebrewer. After that stint, I spent a year in Flagstaff, Arizona working at Beaver Street Pub and Brewery. But I didn’t fully appreciate then how creative and fulfilling brewing as a career could be.

I returned to UVM to get my master’s degree in forestry and worked as a scientist and outdoor educator for 15 years. In 2007, I started to consider opening a small brewery. Friends and family had been encouraging me to do so for years.

When did you decide you should pursue your hobby as a profession?

It took a number of years of people asking me if they could buy my homebrewed beer, to which I always replied: “Sorry, no. I only make two cases at a time. I’d be happy to give you a couple of bottles as a gift.”

As my attitude toward brewing evolved from something that was largely done for pleasure, I started to appreciate how much hard work and creativity goes into crafting top-quality beers. I researched the brewing process, the investments required, and the mechanics of owning and operating a business. That’s when I decided to open a brewery part time with very small equipment.

When I started, I didn’t even know there was a term for my brewery—a nanobrewery! I was able to see if I enjoyed brewing as a job rather than a hobby, and if our beer would sell in the marketplace. I quickly found that I have a true passion for brewing as a career, and that people love our beer. From day one, people have always bought Lawson’s Finest faster than I can make it.

How did you learn the business, and did you make any mistakes?

My wife, Karen, has supported me as a business partner and soul mate throughout this journey. We’ve learned the business together, and over time her role in running the business has grown. When I started out, I already had a solid foundation of knowledge about running a business. The rest of it, I’ve learned along the way.

The distribution side of the business—ordering, sales, and maintaining equipment—was the newest aspect to me. On the brewing side, I’ve learned to be more self-sufficient and improved my mechanical inclination. With a very small business, you don’t often have the resources or employees on hand every day. When something like a pump in the brewery breaks, you have to quickly figure out how to fix it yourself.

I’ve made plenty of small mistakes in the brewery that were relatively easy to fix, had a few minor burns and injuries, but nothing major. When I look back at our history, I have no regrets.

As a small-business entrepreneur, how do you balance your personal life and your brewery?

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is one of the most challenging aspects of owning your own business. When we upgraded our brewing equipment a few years ago, I felt compelled to work long hours to ensure that we could continue to be successful (and pay for the equipment).

Over the last couple of years, I've taken some of the pressure off myself to work and have found it much easier to strike the right balance between family, work, and personal time. Family is the number one priority for me. I have two young girls, who are growing up fast. I’m pleased that we’ve kept our business until now as a home-based operation. This has made it much easier to spend time with my family.

Could you ever have predicted the success of Lawson’s Finest, and do you see change or growth in the future for your liquids?

No! I knew our venture would be successful due to my passion and dedication to quality in brewing beer, but I had no idea it would become part of this much larger Vermont beer phenomenon.

I feel fortunate to have started out when the opportunity was so great for new brewers, especially here in Vermont. It’s definitely harder starting out today with more and more brands and breweries opening every day. You have to find a niche and produce exceptional quality to be really successful.

Looking ahead, we plan to continue making the best-quality beer possible. My dream would be to have one or both of my daughters take over running the business when I retire, but that is years down the road. I want them to pursue whatever career path they have a passion for.

We are really excited to celebrate our eighth anniversary in April and look forward to many more years of brewing ahead!

Interested in learning more about the beer business? UVM is offering an online Business of Craft Beer program. Visit learn.uvm.edu/craftbeer.

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Mon, 07 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22463&category=rsenr-alDavid Blittersdorf (UVM ’81), member of the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors since 2005, was appointed Chair of the Board in fall 2015, and took up the position in January 2016. He replaces out-going Chair Mark Biedron (UVM ’74).

David is President and CEO of AllEarth Renewables, a Vermont-based company that designs and manufactures grid-connected solar renewable energy systems, and he is Managing Partner of the 10-megawatt, four-turbine Georgia Mountain Community Wind farm in northwestern Vermont. He is also the founder and past CEO of NRG Systems, a manufacturer of wind measurement equipment and software for the worldwide wind energy industry.

In addition to his work with the Rubenstein School, David is a board member for the Post Carbon Institute, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas – USA, Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, and the Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center, and is a current board member, founding member and past chair of Renewable Energy Vermont. He also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

As a native Vermonter, David chose to locate his businesses in Vermont for the quality of life, the abundance of outdoor activities, and the opportunity to raise a family and run a business in a place with a strong sense of community.

David views his Rubenstein School board involvement as positive and motivated by a desire to “push UVM to support fossil fuel divestment and a carbon pollution tax.”

He is committed to contributing to renewable energy solutions for the world’s many concerns, including food supplies, population growth, transportation and the global economy — with an emphasis on the need for energy education and a push toward conservation.

“The Rubenstein School and the University of Vermont can help advance the environmental consciousness of this finite world. Students are in a perfect place to question the way things are today and to keep asking what they can do to change things for the better,” David observed.

David hopes Rubenstein School students and alumni care deeply about the world and stay engaged throughout their careers and lives. Through both his business and his advisory roles, he practices the belief that everyone can have an impact on the world and its environmental and economic health.

“David’s leadership in bringing renewable energy solutions to Vermont and the world is an inspiration. I am grateful for both his vision and leadership that he brings to the Rubenstein School and the Board,” shared Dean Nancy Mathews.

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Wed, 02 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22448&category=rsenr-alWhen you grow up in Garrison, New York, as Dana Gulley did, chances are you’re going to be a bit green. After all, John Adams, the founder of the National Resources Defense Council, lived for more than three decades in Garrison, a hamlet 50 miles north of New York City where dirt roads are fiercely protected by a society that considers them more harmonious with the trees.

“I was lucky enough to have access to the hustle and bustle of the city by way of the Hudson train line,” says Gulley, “but could spend my days playing in the woods—usually barefoot—with the kids from the neighboring houses.”

As an adolescent, Gulley discovered the Island School, a Bahamas-based program that teaches teens environmental stewardship through off-the-grid hands-on learning with solar panels, a wind turbine, and an on-site biodiesel lab. Bingo! “While I had been exposed to land conservation, this was my first introduction to the concept of sustainability, and I was immediately hooked,” says Gulley ’10, who earned a degree in environmental studies and is now the director of community engagement for Riverkeeper.

After going to school in the Bahamas, what attracted you to UVM? The people, hands-down. Everyone was pursuing something they cared about, academically or otherwise, and that energy was very attractive to me.

How did you end up working for Senator Patrick Leahy while you were in college?I was taking the Charlie Ross Practicum in Public Service, which paired students interested in environmental policy and politics with state legislators in various House and Senate committees. The course was named for the late Charlie Ross, who was an extremely influential and respected public servant and former professor of public service at UVM. As students, we were fortunate to meet with Charlie’s son, Chuck, who was then the state director for Senator Leahy. Chuck’s integrity and passion for public service was infectious, and it became a goal to get to work with him directly. I applied for Senator Leahy’s internship program the first chance I got.

You became a volunteer firefighter in 2011—are you still putting out figurative fires today? It’s funny; I guess my job does come with its fair share of figurative fires. At Riverkeeper, I’m not doing my job if I’m not regularly building partnerships with individuals, businesses, fellow nonprofits, municipalities, schools, colleges, and community groups. So I work with a lot of different personalities and types of people who are all approaching the work from different perspectives, which you could say makes my work challenging, but it’s what I absolutely love about it.

How has the field of environmental studies changed since you first started?I’ve witnessed firsthand how powerful and critical young and diverse voices are in developing solutions to our environmental challenges. We won the ban on fracking in New York when everyone came together—environmental groups, the medical community, educational institutions, religious organizations, businesses, filmmakers, and average citizens asking, “What can I do to make a difference?”

What about the environment and the outdoors most sparks your passion?First and foremost is an inherent sense that all living things deserve respect and that we are shortsighted as a people if we value the greed and conveniences of today over a biodiverse tomorrow. But also, being in natural spaces provides me with inner peace and comfort.

What tips would you give on launching a career in environmental studies? Think outside the box! There are so many ways to protect the environment. I was sure I wanted to be an environmental attorney when I graduated from UVM, which is why I first started working at Riverkeeper, where a third of our staff are environmental attorneys. Five years later, I’m so grateful I went to work instead of straight to law school. Now, I just submitted my applications to business school for nonprofit management and social impact work. If you had told me five years ago that I would pursue an MBA, there’s no way I would have believed you. But yet here I am, taking prep courses in accounting and economics for the first time in my life and feeling like these new skills will allow me to most meaningfully protect our natural resources at this stage in my career.

From working in community engagement, what advice do you have on networking? Relationships are easy when you’re passionate about what you do and genuine in your desire to connect with others. I work with a lot of volunteers and community partners, and it’s important to maintain perspective and remember that often people have full-time jobs, families, and other life obligations that they’re managing while they are giving their time and energy to support Riverkeeper. I try to show my gratitude to people by being flexible but also by not wasting their time. I count myself lucky to get to work with so many different people, and I always try to understand their personal goals so that I can help shape a partnership that is just as fulfilling for them as it is for us.

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Fri, 19 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22300&category=rsenr-alCarl Waite (FOR ’72), long-time research staff member in the Rubenstein School, is a man of few words, many talents, and a work ethic beyond compare. Carl retires this year after 42 years of dedicated service to the School, its research programs and partners, its faculty, staff, and many students.

He earned his UVM degree in forestry with a wildlife management option from the then Department of Forestry in the College of Agriculture. His long career spans the history of the School since just prior to its establishment as the School of Natural Resources in 1973.

Jack-of-all-trades, technician, senior researcher analyst – Carl’s responsibilities evolved over four decades as faculty needed research support, much of it increasingly technical and administrative. He witnessed many changes in natural resources research and in the School.

Ruffed grouse to acid rain

As a young graduate in the early 1970s, he cared for captive fisher and deer for studies on their health and food habits by former wildlife Professors Bob Fuller and Tom Hoekstra and assisted with a ruffed grouse project in Grafton, VT. Carl then switched gears to tree research, and he grew and maintained yellow birch seedlings for research by former Professor Pete Hannah. By 1978, Carl began working on forest genetics and tree improvement projects with former Professor Don DeHayes and his graduate students.

Carl was instrumental in the construction of the first genetics growth room and then improved upon it in the original Aiken Center completed in 1982 as the new home of the then School of Natural Resources. “We were able to grow and maintain up to 10,000 balsam fir seedlings at once under artificial lights to extend photoperiod,” he shared.

Carl worked closely with David Brynn (FOR ’76, NRP ’91) and Bill Baron (FOR ’77) of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation at the former Vermont State Tree Nursery in Essex where Carl and others grew thousands of seedlings which were later out-planted and maintained in research plantations in Vermont and out-of-state. Many of these seedlings were out-planted at UVM’s Wolcott Research Forest in Wolcott, VT, and Carl became the unofficial caretaker of the Forest, where he mowed and provided general maintenance for many years.

In the mid-1980s, acid rain studies took center stage in forest research. Supported by NAPAP (National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program), Carl teamed up with Don, Chip Williams (MS-FOR ’80), Gary Hawley (FOR ’78, MS-FOR ’82), and other colleagues and graduate students to study cold tolerance and genetic diversity of red spruce and balsam fir. In the Northeast, repeated winter injury to red spruce foliage, but not to balsam fir foliage, drove the researchers to investigate a potential relationship to acid precipitation.

Carl, Gary, and colleagues from the USDA Forest Service collected red spruce and balsam fir seed from the Smoky Mountains to Nova Scotia to assess genetic diversity of various geographical sources. This work, spearheaded by Don and Gary, showed that red spruce was less genetically diverse than balsam fir.

“It was an exciting time,” shared Carl. “We found only new growth of red spruce was being injured, the tree lacks the genetic diversity and cold tolerance of other montane species, acid in mountain fog reduces cold tolerance of red spruce seedlings, and nitrogen fertilization enhances cold tolerance.”

In the early 1990s, Carl investigated acid precipitation and cloud chemistry effects on leaf chemistry in forest canopies. He worked with former Research Professor Tim Scherbatskoy (MS, PhD-UVM ’80, ’89), then Research Director of the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative (VMC), a partnership of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, UVM, and the USDA Forest Service. The VMC serves as a clearinghouse for research collaboration and data sharing associated with the monitoring of Vermont’s forest health.

Vermont Monitoring Cooperative and mesocosm studies

Carl’s tenure with the VMC began as a meteorological site supervisor for the VMC at the UVM Proctor Maple Research Center on Mount Mansfield in Underhill Center, VT. He helped to build a 22-meter walk-up tower to access forest canopy for environmental and meteorological monitoring. Efforts by Carl, Miriam Pendleton, technician at Proctor, and others transformed the Center into a nationally recognized atmospheric monitoring site for the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP/NTN, NADP/AIRMoN, NADP/MDN), USDA UV-B Monitoring Program, Atmospheric Mercury Network, and Ambient Ammonia Monitoring Network.

“When I first started doing weekend and vacation coverage at the air quality site, I was completely unfamiliar with computers,” recalled Mim. “There was a DOS machine at the tower that used to baffle me. When I called Carl for help, he would say with tremendous patience, ‘Read the screen, Mim,’ because invariably, the computer would be prompting me to do whatever was needed to move on. I don't know how many times Carl had to repeat ‘Read the screen, Mim,’ but he never made me feel inept. He has been a fantastic mentor to me.”

Since 1996, in addition to maintaining VMC meteorological stations on the east and west sides of Mount Mansfield, Carl spent time, assisted by Rubenstein School staff member Dick Furbush, former captain of the UVM research vessel Melosira, and now Captain Steve Cluett, maintaining three meteorological stations located on Lake Champlain.

Carl also continued to play a large role in the support of forest research in the School. With Professor Deane Wang, Don, Gary, Professor Jeff Hughes, and Jonathan Cumming, he handled much of the fieldwork for an intensive ecosystem study beginning in 1994 and funded by the Mellon Foundation and the McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Research Program.

“Historically, ecosystem studies, like the big Hubbard Brook Ecosystem and “Sandbox” studies in New Hampshire, used non-replicated designs with one plot per treatment,” explained Carl. “We wanted to assess interactions occurring in the early stages of ecosystem development, and we used two to three treatment replications at two different sites.”

Carl maintained sites at the then USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station on Spear Street in South Burlington and at the Wolcott Research Forest. He and others buried 49 large plastic tanks as open-topped mesocosms in which he planted tree seedlings, measured their growth, and sampled leachate, pumped from the bottoms of the tanks, for chemical analysis.

“We found even small amounts of biomass planted in over five metric tons of soil influence nutrient export in the leachate,” said Carl.

More recently, with Professor Carol Adair, Forest Service Scientist Paul Schaberg, Research Associate Gary Hawley, Deane, and graduate students, Carl resurrected the study mesocosms at the now George D. Aiken Forestry Sciences Laboratory on Spear Street to investigate the effects of climate warming on planted seedlings.

In 2008, in the absence of an executive director for VMC, Carl took over the administrative and budgetary duties for VMC activities in conjunction with former Rubenstein School Dean and Professor Larry Forcier, VMC Principal Investigator.

“Carl Waite has brought personal integrity, responsibility, and care to all of his many activities and assignments within the Rubenstein School,” stated Larry. “His organizational and field skills combined to provide remarkable opportunity for a number of faculty, staff, and student research and educational projects. He has been particularly adept at stewarding collaborative efforts, within UVM and beyond, on Vermont forest ecosystems, their sustainability and the sustainability of the Aiken Center itself. It was a true privilege for me to work with Carl and to marvel at his generous, effective, hard-working, and supportive nature.”

In 2013, upon Larry’s retirement, Carl began working with new VMC PI, Research Professor Jennifer Pontius. Together with Jen, Miriam, Judy Rosovsky, and Jim Duncan, Carl capably ensured the continued service of the VMC to the State of Vermont.

“Over more than two decades, Carl has been the ‘wind beneath the wings’ of the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative,” acknowledged Jen. “It is in large part due to his dedication, insight, and patience in pushing paperwork through multiple bureaucracies that the VMC has been able to achieve so much and remain viable over these many years. He will truly be missed.”

As the VMC Program Coordinator, Carl collaborated with Vermont Agency of Natural Resources personnel, Forest Service scientists, academic researchers, and environmental non-profits to provide Vermont with research findings, forest health monitoring, and dissemination of information and data to help in the sustainable management of the state’s forest ecosystems. Each year, Carl and his colleagues planned and hosted the annual VMC conference, a well-attended event that brings together natural resource professionals from far and wide to work collectively on forest health issues in the state and beyond. Under Carl’s tenure, Jim created a VMC website that offers searchable databases and shareable datasets covering a quarter century of research and monitoring of Vermont’s forests.

Greening of Aiken and Aiken Forestry Sciences Lab

Over more than a decade, Carl joined forces with former Professor Alan McIntosh, Don, Gary, and Deane as founding members of the Rubenstein School’s Greening of Aiken initiative and helped bring to fruition the School community’s long-time dream of a green renovated Aiken Center in 2012. Carl continued to work with the team to mentor dozens of Greening of Aiken student interns and their projects on energy efficiency and green design in an annual course now taught by Gary.

“Carl and I started working together in the late 70s,” shared Gary. “I have been amazed throughout this nearly 40-year period how he has always been dedicated and essential to many aspects of our research and particularly to the Greening of Aiken process.”

With the renovation and reconfiguration of the Aiken Center, Forest Service Northern Research Station scientists from the Laboratory on Spear Street moved their offices to Aiken, and Rubenstein School laboratories, some research staff, and VMC personnel, including Carl, relocated to the Spear Street facility. There, Carl became the facilities manager.

As a member of the School lands committee for many years, Carl helped guide management of the School’s forest properties throughout the state. And, for 14 years, he processed School course evaluations to help steer School curriculum review and revision.

For 42 years, from 6:30 am until 4:00 pm and beyond, Carl worked, often by himself, performing fieldwork at research sites around the state; growing and maintaining tree seedlings in the growth room, greenhouse, and field plots; analyzing research and monitoring data; and writing reports. He devoted his life to giving the School and its research programs, its students and faculty valuable, top-notch research, technical, and administrative support.

Deane sums up Carl’s tireless dedication to the School, "It's a Saturday, and no one else is around. Carl is finishing up something that needed to happen. It's raining, damp, and cold; the tanks need pumping, and no one else is around. Carl is out there getting the job done. There's lots to do every day, and deadlines are coming up. Carl has maxed out on untaken vacation days, still not taking a day off. Carl's work has been reliable, consistent, and critical to the functioning of the School and its research for a lot of years!"

“I would have to say I most enjoyed the field research and my time spent outdoors,” shared Carl, “but I also valued the mix of responsibilities I accumulated over the years and the relationships I developed with long-time colleagues.”

Carl and his wife Sarah, who works at a local elementary school, will continue to live in Essex Junction, VT. Carl looks forward to spending more time with his son Nathaniel, daughter-in-law, and especially his two granddaughters who live in Westford, VT and visiting his daughter Ashlee and son-in-law in western New York state.

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Tue, 02 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22226&category=rsenr-alJoshua Halman (BS-UVM ‘01, MS-NR ’07, PhD-NR ’13) spent a decade studying forest and tree health in the University of Vermont Rubenstein School. As a forest health specialist since February 2015 with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, he applies his research expertise to the state’s forest monitoring projects.

“In addition to learning about tree physiology and forest health, my time at UVM helped me develop skills in study design and effective communication,” shares Josh. “I routinely use all of these skills in various arrangements on a daily basis, whether explaining tree health concerns to a landowner or helping create a protocol for emerald ash borer detection.”

At the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation office in Essex Junction, VT, Josh manages several different projects. He could be fielding shade-tree inquiries from landowners one day, developing sampling protocols for insect surveys another day, or assessing fall foliage progression yet another day.

In particular, the state’s phenology project tracks progression of important seasonal changes in forest trees. With sugar maple, in particular, over the last 25 years, the Department has monitored different stages of bud development in the spring and expression of fall color and leaf drop in the fall.

“This has allowed us to generate a long-term record that not only indicates whether or not the timing of spring and fall events is changing, but also allows us to identify changes in growing season length,” explains Josh. “In the context of a changing climate, this is obviously an important dataset for studying regional patterns. Indeed, we have found peak fall color is occurring later over the 25-year sampling period, and the growing season is becoming longer as well.”

Research roots

Josh’s graduate research evolved out of a long-time collaboration between the Rubenstein School and the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station. His advisor, Paul Schaberg, Forest Service scientist and adjunct faculty member in the Rubenstein School, and Gary Hawley, Rubenstein School research associate, served as mentors and colleagues. Josh acknowledges Paul and Gary, for their direct impact on his education and career path.

“In addition to the myriad research projects and experiences they provided, they also stressed the importance of becoming a compelling communicator,” he states. “Over the years, they impressed upon me that even the most groundbreaking study means relatively little if the findings and context can’t be conveyed to others. I think about this often now because of the variety of audiences I speak with, and it is one of the more important lessons I learned at UVM.”

His master’s research took him to Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire where he examined the physiological response of red spruce trees to long-term calcium fertilization. Decades of calcium additions to an entire watershed have brought forest soils back to pre-pollution levels of calcium, which was largely leached out as a result of chronic acid deposition.

The research team analyzed needles from spruce trees on the calcium-addition watershed and discovered greater concentrations of sugars that contribute to cold tolerance and higher antioxidant activity compared to foliage from the unfertilized reference watershed.

“In short,” sums up Josh, “trees growing in soils with pre-pollution levels of calcium were better equipped to deal with the stresses of winter conditions.”

As a doctoral student, Josh continued to examine the influence of calcium-availability on the response of forest trees to stresses.

He explored the capacity of paper birch trees in Vermont to recover from ice-storm damage. Birches growing on soils with higher calcium levels were able to rebuild their crowns, he determined, and they accrued greater diameter growth following ice storm breakage than did trees on soils with lower calcium levels.

Returning to Hubbard Brook, Josh and his colleagues turned their attention to the influence of calcium and aluminum additions on sugar maple and American beech. Josh found that sugar maple roots, shoots, and foliage were significantly more stressed by addition of aluminum (a toxic element to plants that is mobilized by acid deposition) than by calcium additions or control conditions. Calcium additions favored growth of mid-canopy sugar maple trees to out-grow beech, while additions of aluminum resulted in greater growth of beech over maple.

“This response suggests that American beech – a species thought to be aluminum tolerant – was able to capitalize on aluminum-stressed sugar maple,” notes Josh. “Beech actually produced its highest growth rate on aluminum-addition sites compared to other treatments.”

Josh lives in Jericho with his wife Lindsey, a teacher at Essex Middle School, and their daughter Aila. When not in the woods (and sometimes even then!), Josh is always on the look-out for new places to fly fish. He plays mandolin with a number of local acts and enjoys hiking and cross-country skiing with his family.

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Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:00:00 -0500http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=22154&category=rsenr-alTwo days after graduation, Molly Alves (WFB ’14) set off on the cross-country road trip of her life. She headed to the state of Washington and her dream job as assistant wildlife biologist on the Tulalip Tribes Reservation.

Forty-five minutes north of Seattle, the 22,000-acre reservation, where Molly helps to manage wildlife populations, borders Puget Sound to the west and is a short drive to the North Cascade Mountains to the east. The reservation encompasses marine waters, tidelands, fresh water creeks and lakes, wetlands, and forests long relied upon by tribal members for fishing, hunting, and gathering berries, herbs, and cedar to make baskets and clothing.

Molly’s new home in the Pacific Northwest is a far cry from Rhode Island, where she grew up. But, with a passion for animals, at age twelve she began volunteering at the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, RI where she cared for cheetahs, elephants, giraffes, and other African mammals. Through her volunteer work she earned the opportunity to spend ten days in Manitoba, Canada where she studied polar bears and climate change with Polar Bears International.

“Before this experience I thought that I wanted to be a zookeeper,” Molly shares, “but afterwards I knew that being in the field doing research was my calling. I applied to several schools with reputable wildlife programs, but none made me feel more at home than UVM, and ultimately, I don’t think any of the other schools could have given me half of the opportunities that I had as a student in the Rubenstein School.”

A minor in geospatial technologies, valuable internship experiences, study abroad in Tanzania, and practical wildlife and leadership skills gained as member and president of the UVM Wildlife and Fisheries Society (an official chapter of The Wildlife Society) more than qualified Molly for the job with the Tulalip Tribes. She was thrilled to discover she would be working with another Rubenstein School alum, Mike Sevigny (WFB ’92), wildlife manager for the Tribes.

Since June 2014, Molly has helped to trap nuisance beavers throughout the greater Seattle area and to relocate them to headwater streams of the Skykomish River in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Here, the beavers’ dam building activities turn restorative. As nature’s engineers, the beavers help to store freshwater, combat low summer flows, temper peak winter flows, decrease erosion, increase channel complexity and riparian zone width, and create rearing habitat for wild salmon, a subsistence resource for many tribal members.

Molly feeds and cares for captured beaver families maintained at the Tulalip Fish Hatchery before moving them up river. She experiments with attaching radio transmitters to beavers to track their activities, and she will soon use her GIS skills to map and measure the amount of surface water being stored by beavers at successful relocation sites.

In the winter, Molly assists with trapping, radio-collaring, and tracking cow elk in the Skagit Valley, home to the North Cascades elk herd. The Tribes’ goal is to increase elk population numbers to preserve and enhance hunting opportunities for tribal members. Molly manages the GPS collar data and maps elk movement to determine if hunting pressure is forcing elk to cross major roads.

She creates interpretive maps for several wildlife projects, surveys estuarine birds for a restoration project in the Qwuloolt Estuary, and helps conduct aerial surveys for mountain goats in the North Cascades. She is writing a collaborative management plan between the Tribes and the USDA Forest Service to manage huckleberry, a culturally important food for tribal members, on the national forest.

Molly credits her Rubenstein School advisor and professor Jed Murdoch with most influencing her career path.

“From the time I took his first-year Wildlife Behavior course to his role as advisor of the Wildlife and Fisheries Society student club, Jed provided invaluable knowledge to succeed in class and to go above and beyond outside the classroom to enhance my chances of employment after graduation,” acknowledges Molly. “Through my involvement with the club, I learned how to process a deer, band a bird, use radio telemetry, and how to step up and be a leader. These skills helped me to get internships throughout my time at UVM, which in turn, gave me a better chance of employment after graduation.”

Molly is considering Master’s degree research through the University of Washington in conjunction with her on-the-job experimentation attaching radio transmitters to beavers. She is interested in studying the effects of predators on beaver retention at release sites.

She lives in North Seattle and has explored the Pacific Northwest, pottery and soap making, beer brewing, and container gardening. She has volunteered with Washington Conservation Voters, who work to elect environmentally conscious politicians in Washington State, and the Washington Environmental Council, a nonprofit that advocates for solving the state’s most pressing environmental challenges. She remains involved with The Wildlife Society and attends regional conferences.

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Wed, 28 Oct 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=21685&category=rsenr-alAnn Swanson (WFB ’79) steps down as a longtime, founding member of the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors in October 2015. She leaves a tremendous legacy of environmental expertise, advocacy, leadership, and institutional knowledge of the Rubenstein School. With the establishment of the Board in 1993 by then Dean Lawrence Forcier, Ann was a founding member, served as Chair for nearly eleven years, and remained a member of the executive committee. She shared her experiences as an environmental leader and her perspectives on real world environmental issues to help guide the School for more than two decades.

“The commitment of the Rubenstein School’s Board of Advisors to the School and the University is unwavering and it has been an honor and a privilege to serve among them all these years,” shares Ann. “The University is now well positioned to become the Environmental University, integrating thoughtful consideration of the environment throughout its multiple disciplines.”

As Executive Director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission since 1988, Ann provides leadership to the commission, a legislative assembly representing Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. For the past three decades, she has worked tirelessly with local, state, and federal officials to enact environmental legislation to protect the Bay. She has received high praise for her innovative and astute efforts to restore the 64,000 square mile bay and its tributaries, the largest and most productive estuary in the world – but one historically troubled by pollution and overharvesting.

Ann is a persuasive orator, writer, and negotiator. A field ecologist with a Master’s of Environmental Studies from Yale, she uses her background in science to catalyze action through policy. Overseeing one of the most complex restoration projects in U.S. history, Ann has been guided by the best available science and a deep understanding of the interdependent communities of people and wildlife that live in and around the Chesapeake Bay.

She assisted in creation of the interstate blue crab advisory committee and helped draft and champion the important Chesapeake Bay Agreements that laid out the framework for watershed-wide ecosystem management. She was central in the formation of the Chesapeake Bay Funder’s Network. Ann also worked in coordination with the Environmental Protection Agency to help establish the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load agreement, a historic and comprehensive “pollution diet” to compel action to restore clean water to the Chesapeake Bay region.

Through her work, Ann has helped usher in fundamental improvements in the way water quality and habitat protection is addressed throughout North America and beyond.

Ann served as Vermont’s assistant state naturalist for two years after graduating from UVM and has continued to have a strong connection with the state and University of Vermont. She has shared her experiences, ad­vice, and best practices of the Chesapeake Bay with Vermont and regional officials and leaders working to protect Lake Champlain.

Ann has spoken at the Rubenstein School’s graduation ceremony twice — the only speaker to have done so — served as guest lecturer in classes, and provided career mentoring sessions to students.

“We are incredibly fortunate to have had Ann on our Board of Advisors for more than twenty years and appreciate not only her contributions to our board, but also her generosity to work with and mentor students," acknowledges Rubenstein School Dean Nancy Mathews. "As the former chair of the Board, Ann was instrumental in helping prior deans lead change. Her leadership and passion helped pave the way for the greening of Aiken! This is a true legacy."

Ann received an honorary degree (Doctor of Laws) from the University of Vermont in 2012 for her accomplishments as a field ecologist and for her contributions to the Chesapeake Bay region, Lake Champlain, UVM, and the Rubenstein School. She was awarded Admiral of the Chesapeake by Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley in January 2015. She has received many other awards and accolades including the YWCA Twin Award in 2011; commendations from the Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania legislatures in 2008; a UVM Alumni Achievement Award in 2007; an award from the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club in 2004; and Conservationist of the Year from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in 2001.

She and her husband Eric Swanson (WFB ’79), who is Chief Operating Officer of ForestTrends in Washington, D.C., are both Rubenstein School alumni. They are proud that their son Taylor Swanson (WFB ’12), also an alum, has carried on the family commitment to the environment and is now a Senior Educator at the Echo Hill Outdoor School in Warton, Maryland.

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Thu, 15 Oct 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=21610&category=rsenr-alMargaret Fowle (MS-WFB ’97) is a conservation biologist at Audubon Vermont, the state office for the National Audubon Society, in Huntington, Vermont. She manages peregrine falcon and bald eagle recovery and monitoring programs in Vermont and an initiative to enhance grassland and shrubland habitat for priority birds in the Champlain Valley.

With an undergraduate degree in studio art from Brown University, Margaret began her career working with birds quite serendipitously. Always interested in wildlife, she searched for a job in that field after college. She was lucky to find one at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS) in Woodstock, Vermont in their raptor center. After several years caring for injured raptors, she decided to turn her attention to birds in the wild. She contacted Professor (now Emeritus) David Capen in the then UVM School of Natural Resources and enrolled in the Master’s program in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology.

Margaret’s thesis project took her to Young Island in northern Lake Champlain where she investigated exploding populations of double-crested cormorant in the mid-1990s. In collaboration with the state of Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Vermont Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in the School, she counted nests and young birds on the island, collected regurgitated fish to identify in the lab, and used a computer energetics model to estimate cormorant population size and growth.

She discovered that young cormorants were eating predominately yellow perch, the most abundant non-game fish in the lake. Her findings had direct application to the state’s quest to learn more about the ecological and economic impacts of the cormorants. Since then, Vermont Fish and Wildlife has successfully lowered cormorant populations on Lake Champlain and removed them from Young Island.

“Through Dave Capen and my M.S. work and experience, I made valuable connections in the state and found employment in my field,” acknowledges Margaret. “I gained field, ornithology, and GIS skills that I apply in my current job every day.”

After graduating from UVM in 1997, Margaret returned to VINS as a part-time peregrine biologist. With very few peregrine falcon breeding pairs in the state at that time, she monitored populations, evaluated management needs at each cliff nesting site, implemented protection measures if necessary, and supervised banding of young falcons for future monitoring. She collaborated with private and public landowners, coordinated and trained volunteers, and educated the public.

She soon combined her job at VINS with a full-time position at the National Wildlife Federation in Montpelier, Vermont where she continued to manage the peregrine recovery program, work with citizen volunteers, and coordinate with various partner organizations. She also initiated a bald eagle recovery project for the state and managed the Lake Champlain translocation of nearly 30 young eagles to Addison, Vermont and subsequent monitoring of the birds.

In 2009, Margaret took her current position with Audubon Vermont, where she continues to coordinate peregrine monitoring and assists with bald eagle recovery programs in Vermont. As part of the Vermont Peregrine Falcon Program, she supervises 40 citizen volunteers, who do much of the on-the-ground nest site monitoring, while Margaret tackles the harder to reach nesting sites.

She tracks peregrine populations and determines which nesting sites to close off from hiking and rock climbing during the spring and early summer breeding season. Margaret is excited to report that at least 50 breeding pairs of peregrine falcons now nest in Vermont, a new record this year.

“The peregrine population on the entire eastern coast was down to zero by the late 1960s from use of the pesticide DDT,” Margaret explains. “In the early 1980s, birds were released once again in Vermont at three different sites, and it is great to be a part of this successful recovery of such a majestic species in the state.”

She partners with Vermont Fish and Wildlife to establish monitoring and management protocols for peregrine falcons, secure grant funding for the program, and work with cooperating landowners.

Margaret also works with Vermont Fish and Wildlife to recover bald eagles in Vermont. She drafted the state bald eagle recovery plan, conducts the Winter Bald Eagle Survey, initiated in the 1970s and 80s, coordinates volunteer citizen monitors, and teams up with New Hampshire Audubon to monitor eagles in the Connecticut River Valley.

As part of Audubon’s Champlain Valley Bird Initiative, Margaret collaborates with landowners to enhance habitat for priority grassland and shrubland birds. She assesses the habitat and works with the landowner to structure management of the habitat to improve nesting success for birds of interest, such as the golden-winged warbler, a rapidly declining shrubland species and a candidate for federal endangered listing.

A big partner in this initiative is Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) of Rutland, Vermont. Margaret cooperates with VELCO to survey powerline rights-of-way for priority shrubland birds. In conjunction with Rubenstein School Associate Professor Allan Strong and former graduate student Christine Peterson (MS-WFB ’14), Margaret assisted VELCO in developing bird-friendly management techniques to enhance shrubland habitat in rights-of-way and beyond with participation from adjacent private property owners. Margaret and Audubon Vermont inform landowners about cost-sharing opportunities for habitat improvement available through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

Margaret has also partnered with Allan and many Vermont farmers to improve nesting success of declining bobolinks in agricultural grasslands of the Champlain Valley.

She makes her home in Huntington with her husband Breck Knauft, who is the interim director at the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, and their daughters Ada and Frances. The family enjoys hiking, skiing, biking, and gardening and maybe just a little birding.

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Mon, 28 Sep 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=21493&category=rsenr-alSteven Gaines (FOR ’00) used his forestry education to gain job experience throughout the United States and, now, around the world. He is a technical, political and economic assistant in the Environment, Science, Technology and Health section of the U.S. Embassy in Paramaribo, Suriname on the northern coast of South America. He applies skills he acquired in the Rubenstein School (then School of Natural Resources) and from his job experiences in the U.S. to help restore, conserve, and manage ecosystems and educate others about ecosystem, environmental, and human health.

As the spouse of an official State Department employee who receives two-year assignments at U.S. Embassies, Steve was hired by the Embassy in Suriname to manage the Embassy’s environmental portfolio. Under the Obama Administration, U.S. Embassies place high priority on climate change mitigation. Steve’s forestry and natural resources background gave him a leg up in Suriname, where he focuses on mangrove restoration, wildlife conservation, land management plans, and mercury mitigation in gold mining. He networks with Conservation International (CI), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Tropenbos International, and Anton De Kom University of Suriname.

“The traps act as screens, much like mangrove root systems, that harness a fraction of the thousands of tons of sediment literally floating by the coast from the Amazon Basin,” explains Steve. “Trapped sediment helps to rebuild the eroding coast line. In addition to manual planting of mangroves, mangrove seeds in the sediment are trapped and recolonize the banks to hold the soil. In my first year, we have had good results from this sediment trapping technique which has been successful in Thailand, the Philippines, and the Netherlands.”

Steve is also involved with a CI project, in partnership with the Smithsonian and The Wildlife Society, called TEAM (Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring), ongoing in many countries with significant intact rainforest. This program monitors terrestrial wildlife response to climate change and urbanization. Steve sets camera traps in the rainforest to capture images of jaguars, ocelots, tapiars, anteaters, bush dogs, and monkeys.

“I spent a few weeks camping out in the bush last year,” he shares, “and plan to do the same this year, chopping through the rainforest, setting camera traps, and fishing for piranha and anjumara.”

Steve also works with Peperpot Nature Park in northern Suriname. “Suriname has no real recognized parks, or really anything close to a conservation or preservation area,” states Steve. “However, this park has been somewhat protected as a natural area for recreation, scientific research, and education. I wrote the land management plan for the park, defined their overarching conservation principles, established land management objectives, and came up with a plan to meet objectives, something I learned while at UVM.”

Steve’s plan, accepted and endorsed by WWF which provides funding, will be instrumental in the Park’s future plans. Steve also helped specialists from North Carolina’s Museum of Natural Sciences catch and band several hundred forest interior birds in the Park, as the first real bird inventory in the country. He also established a camera trapping program, so the Park can participate in an Amazon eMammal Program (like eBird) and compare findings to CI's TEAM data.

In an educational or advocacy capacity, Steve informs gold miners in Suriname about environmental and human health dangers from using mercury to process gold and encourages miners to use gravity separation techniques.

“Mercury bonds to the fine gold dust, creating clumps or amalgam,” explains Steve. “Miners then burn the amalgam to release the gold from the mercury. Released mercury travels on air currents and is deposited in water systems where it is consumed by fish and other organisms and bio-accumulates up the food chain to impact humans. I developed educational booklets using universally-understood graphics to help miners learn how mercury travels in air and water and affects the nervous system.”

Forestry Background

Steve credits much of his early forestry training to Professor Emeritus Dale Bergdahl who taught Forest Pathology and Silviculture and advised Steve and several other forestry students as interns at Westford Woods. Through Dale, the Westford Woods internship, and courses taught by Professor Emeritus John “Doc” Donnelly and Lecturer Emeritus John Shane, Steve honed his skills in technical writing and creating land management plans. Steve was co-recipient of the School’s C. Suzanne Whitmore Writing Award with another Westford Woods intern, Gabriel Chapin (FOR ’00), in 2000.

After graduating from UVM, Steve worked for forestry consultant Joe Nelson (FOR ‘79) of Upland Forestry in the Adirondack Mountains of New York and for the U.S. Forest Service on the Boise and Payette National Forests in Idaho where he did forest fire work and cruised timber. He then moved to Virginia and trained as a Biological Woodsman for the Healing Harvest Forest Foundation where he learned precision timber felling and logging using draft horses.

After horse logging for several years, Steve started his own business. He adapted forest landowner objectives into forest management plans which he carried out, focusing on non-commercial timber harvesting. The work began more and more to involve removal of invasive species, such as tree of heaven, Russian olive, and multiflora rose. Desiring further training in invasive species management, Steve returned to school and earned his M.S. in forest management at Virginia Tech where he focused on invasive species control.

Prior to his position with the U.S. Embassy in Suriname, Steve managed 3500 acres of woodlands and trails for the American Chestnut Land Trust in Maryland. In addition to woodlot management, Steve experimented with grafting and pollination techniques that involved pure American chestnut trees, including the largest living American chestnut tree in the state of Maryland.

Future Plans

When he’s not working in the rainforest, Steve plays mandolin and guitar in a Surinamese salsa band. He enjoys fishing and hiking with embassy friends and traveling around the country which has only two main roads, so much travel is by dugout canoe. He volunteers with Green Heritage Fund Suriname which conducts research to protect sloths, dolphins, and anteaters.

Once the two-year assignment in Suriname concludes, Steve and his wife will return to the Washington, DC area. Steve plans to use his connections with CI, WWF, and the Land Trust to resume forestry-related work in the U.S. or maybe apply his newly acquired expertise in sediment trapping in the Chesapeake Bay Area.

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Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=21304&category=rsenr-alFamiliar to many in the Rubenstein School, Dr. Brendan Fisher, most recently Research Associate Professor at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, transitions to Associate Professor in the School this fall. He will contribute his expertise in sustainability science, economics, health, and human behavior to both the School and the UVM Environmental Program. He will also remain a Fellow in the Gund Institute.

“We are tremendously fortunate to have Dr. Fisher join the Rubenstein School, as a tenure track Associate Professor, through the Environmental Program's cluster in Sustainability Studies and Global Environmental Equity,” shares Dean Nancy Mathews. “Dr. Fisher’s expertise in ecological and behavioral economics, global resource equity, and sustainability science will enhance the School's international research presence. He has established himself as a top notch scholar through his work using the concept of ecosystem services to understand tradeoffs between conservation and development. We are delighted to have him also serve as the convener of the Sustainability Studies cluster."

Dr. Fisher's research addresses how environmental change and management affect human well-being and health, longer-term ecological and biodiversity outcomes, and how a better understanding of human behavior can impact social, economic, and ecological sustainability.

“Much of my research, based in some of the poorest communities of Africa and Asia, has to do with how people benefit from well-functioning ecosystems and pay a cost when they are degraded,” he explains. “There are equity issues here, too. For example, who benefits and who bears the costs when a tropical forest is converted into large scale agriculture?”

Dr. Fisher has research projects in Mozambique and Tanzania to better understand how social, economic, and environmental factors interact to affect human health and well-being. With support from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), CARE, and the Rockefeller Foundation, Dr. Fisher also investigates the importance of household gender roles in health outcomes of children. He is discovering different effects between male versus female heads of households in poverty-stricken areas.

In collaboration with Dr. Taylor Ricketts, director of the Gund Institute, and an interdisciplinary team of scientists, Dr. Fisher will continue his work on a global-scale research project funded by the National Science Foundation’s Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). The research team created a database with social, economic, and environmental attributes of close to 10 million households in the poorest countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Their goal is to answer some of the world’s most pressing questions related to links between environmental degradation and human health.

Dr. Fisher has a deep interest in behavioral economics or why and how we make the economic and environmental decisions we do. Together with UVM undergraduate Charlie Martin, he is currently studying how to publicly frame and boost the success of Act 148, Vermont’s Universal Recycling and Composting Law. The law includes the phasing in of mandatory composting of yard debris and food scraps over the next five years to reduce waste going to landfills.

“How can we set up our society to behave more sustainably?” he asks. “There are tons of little things we can change with little cost that can positively affect our happiness, consumption, and how much pressure we put on our world’s ecosystems. There is a lot to learn. The cost of this type of research is relatively small, but the potential benefits for our social, economic, and environmental sustainability are great.”

Dr. Fisher received his Ph.D. in the Rubenstein School at the University of Vermont, his M.S. from Oxford University in the UK, and his B.S. from Bucknell University. He held postdoctoral positions at the University of East Anglia and Princeton University and was a senior program officer at WWF, where he is currently a Fellow.

His recently published research focused on how logging and large scale oil palm plantations in Southeast Asia affect areas of globally important biodiversity. One paper from those studies, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this June, analyzed the finances of a major palm oil company to determine impacts of conserving land on biodiversity and profits.

“It turns out that under certain conditions, protecting biodiversity can actually help generate profit for oil palm companies,” he notes.

With Dr. Ricketts and Gund Affiliate Dr. Robin Naidoo of WWF, Dr. Fisher also published A Field Guide to Economics for Conservationists. This 2015 book provides an easy to understand version of economics that will help conservationists safeguard biodiversity in a more sophisticated and effective way.

Dr. Fisher will continue to teach his graduate level Behavioral Economics course and NR 205, a Rubenstein School undergraduate core course called Ecosystem Management: Integrating Science, Society and Policy. In the spring, he will teach a course in sustainability science in the Environmental Program.

“I hope to incorporate the economic side of environmental studies into the Environmental Program to show students how important it is when looking at solutions for environmental crises,” he shares. “I have been lucky to have worked in far-flung places around the world and have witnessed people coping with environmental change, natural resource scarcity, and poverty. I hope to infuse my experiences into my courses and advising.”

He lives in Burlington, close to UVM campus, with his wife Leigh, a business and marketing expert who cares full-time for their three children. The family manages a very active life style. They walk in Centennial Woods from their backyard, ski at Bolton Valley, bike on the Burlington Bike Path, and play soccer and ice hockey in the local community.

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Mon, 15 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=21025&category=rsenr-alEthan Ducharme grew up in Marshfield, Vermont where his parents are fourth generation loggers. He and his brother spent their days in the woods, catching snakes, hunting squirrels, or fishing in nearby rivers. He developed a deep appreciation for wildlife from the many wild birds his father raised at and in their home — Canada geese, mallards, turkeys, barred owls, and a red-tailed hawk.

Ethan transferred from Texas Tech University to the Rubenstein School Wildlife and Fisheries Biology program. He benefited greatly from both the wildlife courses and his relationships with wildlife faculty Jed Murdoch and Allan Strong.

“I can't stress enough how much Jed impacted my college career; he is a truly inspirational, kind, and down-to-earth person,” acknowledges Ethan. “All of the classes I took from him were amazing and filled with incredibly applicable information for the future wildlife researcher. He was always a person I could go to anytime I was having difficulty in any class and he was always willing to help. He pointed me in the right direction when it came to finding jobs and helping with my resume.”

Ethan graduated in December and took a job on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska where he worked out of the office in Tok. Ethan served as a trapping technician on a Lynx research project.

“We had a remote field camp on the refuge that we could fly to for a few weeks at a time while working,” he explains. “Essentially, I operated a trap line out on the refuge in order to catch cats. Since it was the first year of the 10-year project, we didn't really know if there were Lynx where we were. Our first job was to find Lynx tracks and establish a trail via snow machine so the Lynx would start walking on our trails instead of through the deep snow. We created about a 30-mile loop where we had good signs of Lynx tracks and that became the trap line. It took forever to make the trail since it was all black spruce as thick as you can possibly imagine. Once the trail was broken (2 months after my arrival), we finally started setting the humane traps. We had about 30 sets with trap monitors, so we could hear via radio when they were tripped.”

Ethan and his team successfully captured Lynx which they sedated, photographed, processed, radio-collared, and safely released. Although no longer working in Alaska, Ethan receives regular updates from his boss on the movements of the cats.

The small Rubenstein School classes helped Ethan develop good communication skills and forced him to be able to communicate clearly and effectively in front of his peers. While in Alaska, he points out, “I would come back out of the field and present in front of 15 USFWS employees. It was critical that I could explain to them what we did and how it went in a professional manner.”

Ethan is now working for the University of Hawaii in a year-long position studying and removing Axis deer from the big island of Hawaii. In the future, he plans to attend graduate school, but for now he is eager to travel and conduct field research on animals of interest and see as much as he can while he has the opportunity.

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Thu, 28 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=20963&category=rsenr-alEnvironmental lawyer David Zayas (RM ’04), a native of Bellows Falls, Vermont, is now Senior Manager of Regulatory Affairs and Technical Services at the National Hydropower Association in Washington, DC. He arrived at his law career by way of a non-traditional path filled with pertinent jobs, travels, and explorations.

As an undeclared major in the Rubenstein School, he contemplated a major in geology after studying the topic during a month-long backpacking trip around Colorado; worked for a semester in Orlando, Florida in the Walt Disney World College Program; and studied aboriginal culture and explored coral reefs during a semester abroad at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.

He eventually chose recreation management as his major and acknowledges Professor Robert Manning and Senior Lecturer David Kaufman for their lasting influence. “Bob’s courses exposed me to and helped me understand and appreciate environmental philosophy and early environmental movement issues,” he shares. “Dave’s focus on the private side and business aspects of outdoor recreation provided an important balance to the overall Rubenstein School curriculum.”

After graduating, Dave spent some summers working in Burlington and winters traveling and skiing the West. He signed on with Will Raap, Rubenstein School Board of Advisors member and owner of Gardener’s Supply, to assist with a Rubenstein School winter break travel course, focused on watershed restoration in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Dave traveled ahead to handle logistics and research data on the watershed in preparation for the class.

These combined experiences pointed him toward a career in environmental law. Once at Vermont Law School, he focused on water law and then took up energy and climate change law and graduated in 2010 with a J.D. and a Master’s in Environmental Law and Policy.

Throughout law school, his job experiences were many and mixed, but they all related to his interests in the nexus between water, energy, and climate change. He interned at the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission, and TransCanada and worked as a research associate at Vermont Law School’s Environmental Tax Policy Institute and as a clinician at the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic.

Following law school, he accepted a clerkship on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). After his clerkship, Dave was Director of Government Relations for the American Hiking Society, a national conservation and recreation organization. This job, in particular, directly related to his experience and education at UVM and the Rubenstein School.

In late 2011, he began working at the National Hydropower Association (NHA), a national association dedicated to promoting the growth of clean, affordable U.S. hydropower. NHA seeks to secure hydropower’s place as a climate-friendly, renewable, and reliable energy source that serves national environmental, energy, and economic policy objectives.

“Much of what I learned at UVM was applicable and relevant throughout law school and carries through in my current position at NHA,” notes Dave. “Not only was it a springboard, but my recreation management degree and experience at UVM gave me a strong foundation and the tools to succeed in the future. A lot of the Rubenstein School’s core curriculum related to federal agencies and administrative process, and obviously science, ecology, and natural resources. I work in these areas every single day.”

Dave is responsible for managing NHA’s Regulatory Affairs Committee, Small Hydro Council, Hydraulic Power Committee, and the Operational Excellence (OpEx) program – hydroexcellence.org. He represents NHA before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the federal land-management agencies (Fish & Wildlife Service, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, Forest Service, National Park Service, and others), the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, NGOs, and national coalitions, among others.

“I work with a great staff at NHA and have developed wonderful relationships with our member companies; I get to visit and tour hydropower facilities located in some very remote and beautiful places around the country,” Dave explains. “Hydropower is a renewable resource and my work contributes to a clean and low-carbon future; but the infrastructure also provides many societal benefits — flood control, irrigation, water storage, and recreation. It’s rewarding to know that my work also contributes to providing these benefits.”

Dave, his wife Stephanie, and their 11-month-old son, Pierce, live in Maryland near DC. Dave enjoys hiking, mountain biking, fishing, and skiing, landscaping and gardening. He and Stephanie take advantage of the Chesapeake Bay and are teaching Pierce to love the outdoors. Dave also serves on the UVM Alumni Association Washington, DC Regional Board, which provides a network for UVM alumni and newly admitted students in the DC area.

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Tue, 26 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=20865&category=rsenr-alWith many family alumni connections to the University of Vermont, Susan Swenson Barbuto (UVM ’76) is a member of the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors and represents the School on UVM’s National Campaign Council. The Council serves to inform volunteer campaign leaders about School and university priorities to help guide the direction of fund-raising efforts.

“My loyalty and dedication to UVM began in the mid-1970s when I transferred to UVM because it offered some of the first environmental studies classes in the country,” shares Susan. “The education I received at UVM was outstanding and set me on my course as a lifelong environmentalist and advocate, ahead of today’s trends. I am proud to participate and contribute to the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors; as UVM is still seen as the leading edge environmental university.”

In her hometown of Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, Susan is an environmental commissioner, community educator, and advocate for sustainability. She is a Rutgers University Environmental Steward, master gardener, and educator who volunteers in the parks. Susan teaches an environmental film class at her local community college and chairs a three town environmental film festival every spring.

She has participated in the Ramapo College Master’s in Sustainability program and received an award of excellence from the New Jersey Learns Education for Sustainability/Cloud Institute. Formerly, Susan was a New York City hospital social worker and adjunct faculty in field work at Columbia University where she received her M.S. in 1982. She is parent to Kristina (UVM ’09) and Jarrett (UVM ’12).

"Susan Barbuto brings a wealth of experience in environmental education, community service and sustainability, and social work to the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors," states Rubenstein School Dean Nancy Mathews. "She has been instrumental in helping to focus the School's vision, while at the same time bringing passion and vibrancy to the Board."

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Mon, 18 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=20857&category=rsenr-alSarah Crow (MS-NR ’08) took her master’s work in community-based forest certification in Vermont to a national level. As Senior Director of Certification at the American Forest Foundation (AFF), she leads certification programming for the national American Tree Farm System.

Originally from Minnesota and with a B.S. in forestry from the University of Montana, Sarah conducted her graduate research with advisor Professor Cecilia Danks to understand the motivations for forest certification among community-based forestry initiatives in Vermont. She worked closely with community-based forestry practitioners and learned about the forest certification process and its role to ensure that forest products come from responsibly managed forests.

She discovered that the community-based forestry initiatives in her study were motivated to pursue certification largely for non-economic reasons such as public image, value alignment, and working relationships. Her work also highlighted the importance of facilitating-organizations in helping community-based forestry initiatives navigate the certification process.

“I was fortunate to work with Cecilia Danks,” acknowledges Sarah. “I learned from her perspective that research should be meaningful and go beyond the traditional academic space to be applicable for broader communities. My master’s work was certainly foundational to what I do now.”

Sarah joined AFF in 2011 and works remotely from her home in Wisconsin for the AFF’s American Tree Farm System (ATFS) headquartered in Washington, DC. The ATFS, which celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2016, is the largest and oldest sustainable family woodland system in the United States and includes 24 million acres of certified forestland. The ATFS provides outreach, education, and tools that woodland owners need to be effective stewards of America’s forests.

“Family woodland owners in the U.S. own more land collectively than the federal government or industry, so when we consider how to achieve conservation at scale, we need to consider family woodlands,” Sarah points out. “Providing a third party, audited certification program through the ATFS helps family woodland owners by creating connections to markets that recognize and value stewardship.”

Sarah oversees the technical elements of ATFS certification, including international endorsement, standards development and interpretation, internal monitoring, third party auditing, and inspector training programs, which engage more than 4000 volunteer inspecting foresters who come from private consulting, state agencies, conservation organizations and forest industry partners.

“The American Tree Farm System is a pretty unique organization that works almost entirely through partners. In my role, I help to build collaborative relationships with our partners across sectors and geographic regions,” Sarah explains.

She adds, “The best part of my job is connecting with the woodland owners, across the country, most of whom own less than 100 acres. It is amazing to witness their everyday contributions to sustainable forestry, their passion for and connections to their land, and their desire to provide the clean water, clean air, and wildlife habitat that we all depend on.”

Prior to her current position with AFF, Sarah worked for the Montana Department of Natural Resources, University of Minnesota’s Boreal Forest and Community Resilience Project, and American Forest and Paper Association. She also contributed to projects with Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation; World Wildlife Fund; and the Swedish Agricultural University.

After a trip to Ukraine with Professor William Keeton and other faculty from the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, Sarah returned to Ukraine as a Fulbright Scholar immediately following graduate school. Her work there focused on how forest-reliant communities participated in public engagement processes associated with a proposed UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

Sarah shares a passion for food with her husband, an artisan cheesemaker, who started his cheesemaking career in Vermont. The couple enjoys cooking, gardening, and of course, eating, with some running and hiking on the side.

The award recognizes UVM faculty for excellent teaching as exemplified by capacity to animate, engage, motivate, and challenge students; innovation in teaching methods and curriculum development; inclusion of learning outside the classroom; demonstrated commitment to cultural diversity; and exceptional advising.

“Matt exemplifies all of the traits of an outstanding teacher and is richly deserving of this award,” notes Rubenstein School Dean Nancy Mathews. “He cares deeply about students and uses his creativity and intuitive teaching skills to engage them to achieve their potential. His devotion to creating an inclusive and empowered classroom, one that embraces all aspects of diversity, is truly remarkable.”

Matt teaches courses on systems thinking and problem-solving, power and privilege, field ecology and wildlife tracking, and the ecology of leadership, learning and change. Matt is all about exploring non-traditional teaching and learning practices that catalyze transformation, facilitate high-leverage learning, and support well-being for all. He is fascinated with what nature and ecology can teach us about leadership and learning.

For close to ten years, Matt taught the long-running NR 206 Environmental Problem-solving and Impact Assessment, the capstone core course for all Rubenstein School seniors. He was instrumental in transforming the course into a service-learning course in 2005. Students now conduct real-world projects in collaboration with a community partnering organization such as Shelburne Farms, Intervale Conservation Nursery, EarthWalk Vermont, Winooski River Parks District, and many others. Matt turned NR 206 into what he calls “a hands-on adventure in purposeful thinking and interdisciplinary problem-solving.”

He evolved the content and format of the course in response to feedback from students and lab instructors. Wrote former lab instructor Elise Schadler (MS-NR ’12), “He knows well the challenges of teaching one of the last required courses for RSENR seniors, including – but not limited to – finding authentic ways to integrate the knowledge and skills of such a diverse student population, maintaining meaningful community partner relationships over time, helping students to see 206 as the opportunity that it really can be, and prevailing over the senior slump. Yet the rewards exceed these challenges; each semester he witnesses students develop their inner resilience, sense of efficacy, and confidence, sees the passion of RSENR seniors as they consider NR 206 a stepping stone into life after UVM, and appreciates the transformative experiences some students have when they realize and overcome their blind spot.”

A student in the 2013 class wrote that “my 206 project has no doubt been the most academically enriching activity in which I have taken part this semester, if not throughout my educational career.”

Matt has also taught NR 207 Power, Privilege and Environment, the service-learning course NR 385 Applied Wildlife Management and Field Biology for UVM's Field Naturalist and Ecological Planning Master's students, and NR 306 Envisioning a Sustainable Future for Rubenstein School graduate students.

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Fri, 08 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=20842&category=rsenr-alErin De Vries (MS-NR ‘08) works for Lake Champlain Sea Grant, housed within the Rubenstein School, as the Aquatic Science Literacy Educator and UVM Watershed Alliance Coordinator. Her work focuses on coordinating K-12 programming around watersheds, water quality, and aquatic resources that engages students and teachers in the Lake Champlain Basin.

The place-based education approach she employs mixes classroom instruction with applied action, such as water quality monitoring and community service. Erin's passion for water resource conservation and desire to share her knowledge dovetails with the overarching goal of the program, which is to ensure that all students in the Lake Champlain Basin are aware of water resources and how to be good stewards.

Kathryn Wrigley talks to Erin about where she is and the passion that drives her.

What is the most popular Lake Champlain Sea Grant program requested by schools?

The stream monitoring and stewardship program is the most popular. It takes place over several weeks. The highlights of the multi-week program include: building a watershed with the students, using exploration stations that help the students key out macroinvertebrates, practicing using the field equipment, and assessing stream habitat and water quality health at local streams

What type of field equipment do you use?

We commonly use kick nets for collecting bugs from streams. Students have to work in pairs with one person “kicking” rocks and the other student catching organisms with the net. The rocks have to be disturbed because many common macroinvertebrates live on the bottom of the rocks. The students then key out the bugs. We also use Hach water quality test kits.

Why is so much time spent learning about and collecting bugs?

Macroinvertebrates are good water quality indicators. Certain species can only live in excellent quality water while others are known for being able to live under poor conditions. Bugs are also engaging and fun to look at for students.

What types of stewardship projects are implemented?

The stewardship portion is an extra week after the education and monitoring workshops. It is a crucial piece because it is the “action” part of the outreach. Students create a project that they want to do surrounding water. Some classes have spear-headed river clean-up efforts and invasive species removals, while others have created outreach for the larger community, such as, the Voices for the Lake at ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center.

How did you end up working for RSENR and the Lake Champlain Sea Grant?

I have always loved water. I grew up near the headwaters of the Brandywine River in Pennsylvania. I used to float in the cool water on hot summer days and during one of these floats it occurred to me that I wanted to work with water. As an undergraduate I focused on wetlands, which led me to consulting and eventually a wetland ecologist position with the State of Vermont. I then attended UVM as part of the Field Naturalist and Ecological Planning graduate program, where I worked on a project inventorying wetlands and vernal pools. I spent a bit of time out west and in the Caribbean after graduate school. On Saint Kitts, I worked as a consultant and helped create the St. Mary's Biosphere Reserve (UNESCO), which was the first biosphere reserve in the English speaking Caribbean. I then came back to Vermont and worked for the Environmental Studies program at UVM prior to returning to water centric education and outreach with Lake Champlain Sea Grant. I am lucky to have made my passion my job.

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Thu, 23 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400http://www.uvm.edu/rss/news/?Page=news&storyID=20780&category=rsenr-alWhile earning his B.S. in biology and environmental studies at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, Ryan Morra heard about the Rubenstein School. “I heard that RSENR was a forward-thinking school and that it engaged its students in real-world learning.” He chose to earn his master’s degree through the Rubenstein School’s Ecological Planning curriculum because of its long reputation for excellent field-based, hands-on, relevant learning that prepares students for professional environmental careers.

Ryan grew up in southwestern Connecticut then moved to Washington, DC, where he worked on and led community service projects throughout the U.S. with Americorps NCCC, a national program for 18-24-year-olds. After earning his B.S., Ryan went on to obtain his teaching license through a fellowship at Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center in Colorado. He later secured a teaching position with Big Picture South Burlington, an innovative, internship-based learning program at South Burlington High School in Vermont. Desiring to further develop his teaching skills, Ryan built his master's project around environmental education.

“As a former high school science teacher, I wanted to become more fluent in the natural history of the region and gain the skills needed to get my students learning outside. I focused on developing my skills as a naturalist and on creating place-based learning opportunities for students.”

For his master’s project, Ryan developed a place-based education program with the community of Adjuntes, Puerto Rico, modeled after the PLACE Program, a partnership between Shelburne Farms and the University of Vermont. The PLACE Program uses an integrative landscape framework that combines the physical landscape (geology, soils, climate), the cultural landscape (indigenous and colonial histories, modern culture), and the ecological landscape (plants and wildlife) to more holistically understand a particular place. This integrated understanding is used to educate the public and galvanize the community to action in engaging with their place.

Ryan’s current position as the Education for Sustainability Partnerships Coordinator and Educator at Shelburne Farms in Vermont grew directly out of his master’s project. He designs and implements professional development programs for educators around sustainability and place-based education. He runs workshops for teachers, helps schools with curriculum design, and collaborates with other non-profit organizations on national initiatives. He is also one of the lead educators for the farm- and forest-based education programs for elementary school students and collaborates regularly with high schools and colleges.

“My hope is that through my work I can help transform public education in such a way that all students are engaging in and learning about sustainability throughout their whole K-12 experience.”